Re: Choosing name for XML serialization (Was: Re: HTML5 differences from HTML4 editor's draft (XHTML5 and XHTML2))

On 23/06/07, Tom Morris <bbtommorris@gmail.com> wrote:
> The RDF community has had a similar issue since RDF can be serialized
> in a number of ways. Hence RDF/XML, RDF/N3, RDF/Turtle and RDF/TriX...
>
> On that basis, why not 'HTML/XML 5' for the XML serialization and
> 'HTML 5' for the non-XML serialization?
>
> Since the HTML 5 specification currently discourages authors from
> using the XML serialization, it would make little practical difference
> to the page author whether it's called XHTML5 or HTML/XML 5. It would
> help prevent confusion with the W3C's XHTML 1.0/1.1/2.0 effort though.

Well, the namespace issue is such that backwards compatibility
requires "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml". Even if we made our own
HTML5/XML namespace* it would only be an alias for the same set of
semantics as the XHTML1 namespace. Existing XHTML1 content uses
"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" and user agents have to support that
indefinitely.

So, given that we still will have "xhtml" in the namespace for the XML
serialisation, it would be illogical to use a name other than XHTML
for the actual serialisation of it

Also, since XHTML1.0 is an XML serialisation of HTML4.01 and XHTML1.1
is a modularised version of the same, and thousands of developers use
XHTML1, the mess we'd make if we didn't go with the XHTML name will
affect many more than the confusion regarding relation with XHTML2 if
we chose to name it XHTML1.5 or XHTML5.


* If we indeed have to make a new html(5) namespace if you ask me
should be something like "http://ns.w3.org/html" so that developers
don't have to memorise the year and/or version.
-- 
David "liorean" Andersson

Received on Sunday, 24 June 2007 09:12:09 UTC